EVENING. People.

Supreme Court Overturns Minister's Murder Conviction

The Supreme Court on Monday overturned the murder conviction of a West Virginia minister accused of killing his wife in 1996, shortly after taking out a $100,000 insurance policy on her life.

The court, in a unanimous and unsigned decision, threw out Rev. James Flippo's conviction because evidence used at his 1997 trial might have been obtained unlawfully by police. His case now will head back to the West Virginia Supreme Court.

Flippo had been sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 1996 bludgeoning death of his wife, Cheryl, at a Babcock State Park cabin.

Prosecutors said Flippo was trying to cash in on the life insurance policy he had taken out on his wife about a month before her death. Flippo told police an unidentified man who had been stalking them for several weeks broke into the cabin and knocked him unconscious before killing his wife.

After sealing off the cabin as a crime scene, police opened a briefcase that had been on a table inside. In the briefcase, they found photographs introduced as evidence at Flippo's trial.

The photographs, according to court records, included several of a man who appears to be taking off his pants. The man was identified as a member of Flippo's Church of God congregation in Nitro, W.Va.

Prosecutors said the photographs were evidence of a homosexual relationship between Flippo and that man, and that Cheryl Flippo's displeasure with the relationship may have been one of the reasons Flippo decided to kill her.